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Severe Shortage of Nursing Home Workers Imperiling Residents

October 14th, 2002

A nationwide shortage of nursing home workers is causing thousands of preventable deaths a year, according to an article that is part of a weeklong investigative series on nursing home deaths running in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Earlier this year, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services reported to Congress that more than nine out of 10 nursing homes lack enough employees to provide adequate care and that most would have to increase staff by at least 50 percent to do the job properly. ( See 'Nursing Homes Woefully Understaffed, Study Finds,'ElderLawAnswers, Feb. 20, 2002.)

Few people are willing to accept poverty-level wages for work that many consider unpleasant and demeaning. According to the article by Post-Dispatch reporters Phillip O''Connor and Andrew Schneider, this has resulted in nursing home residents going hungry or thirsty or being left to lie in their soiled beds for hours on end without being turned, as well as medical records being falsified to overstate the amount of food and fluid residents consumed or the medication they were given.

"It''s pitiful. It''s criminal. It''s a tragic commentary on our society that people are dying in our nursing homes because they need help and aren''t getting it," said Catherine Hawes, professor and director of Texas A&M University''s Southwest Rural Health Research Center and a national authority in evaluating nursing home quality.

Some experts believe that the federal government should mandate staffing ratios, because the industry isn''t going to do so voluntarily. As we reported in February, the Bush administration has no plans to impose such minimum standards, citing the additional costs that nursing homes would incur if they had to hire more help.

The investigative series ends October 18. Other articles in the series so far are: 'Thousands Are Being Killed In Nursing Homes Each Year' and 'Many Nursing Home Patients Are Neglected Even After Death.' To read these and upcoming articles, go to: http://www.stltoday.com/nursinghomes

Hale Ball Carlson Baumgartner Murphy PLC

Attorney Samantha Simmons Fredieu is an associate at Hale Ball. Ms. Fredieu graduated magna cum laude from Vermont Law School where she was the symposium editor on the Vermont Law Review, a production editor on the Vermont Journal of Environmental Law, and a member of the Moot Court Advisory Board. She has clerked for...

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Margaret A. O'Reilly, PC

Margaret A. O’Reilly is an estate planning and elder law attorney with over thirty-five years of legal experience. Attorney O’Reilly graduated from Duke University with a degree in psychology, and received her law degree from Northeastern University School of Law in Boston, Massachusetts. For over 15 y...

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Hale Ball Carlson Baumgartner Murphy PLC

Jean Galloway Ball is certified in Elder Law by the National Elder Law Foundation. She is a 1977 honors graduate of the National Law Center, George Washington University, and she did her undergraduate work at the University of California at Berkeley, graduating Phi Beta Kappa in 1971.
She is admitted to practice in Vir...

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